The ceremony of gathering twelve-year old children together in each parish for the first sacrament of the Eucharist is not an old custom. The primitive Church took Christ's word literally: “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” (John, VI, 53), from which it was generally thought that children who died before having received communion were as damned as if they had not been baptised. The initiation of neophytes (...) required successively both sacraments and confirmation. When the custom was established of baptising the new born (2nd and 3rd centuries) they received communion at the same time. As they were incapable of eating the host, the blood of Christ was conferred upon them in the guise of wine. (shrink)

Sur la couverture des albums parus aux éditions Delcourt, on peut lire « Marcel Proust, À la recherchedu temps perdu, adaptation et illustrations de Stéphane Heuet ». En affichant ainsi son rôle avec modestie,l’adaptateur-illustrateur réussit à faire endosser à Proust la paternité littéraire d’une BD , ce qui n’est pas rien. Comble d’ironie ou de provocation, la Recherche illustrée par Heuet,c’est Tintin au pays des Guermantes. Dans les cases rectangulaires d’un strip standard au graphisme résolument« ligne claire », ceux (...) qui aiment la phrase proustienne en ses méandres, avec sa lecture au lentcours, découvrent une ligne TGV : Un amour de Swann en deux albums de 517 dessins, au lieu des200 pages en Pléiade. Cette alliance contre-nature est dénoncée par certains défenseurs de la littératurequi y voient une dénaturation de l’oeuvre et par des amoureux de la BD d’auteur qui déplorent une BDsans audace graphique. L’objet de cet article est de répondre à ces deux objections.On the cover of an album series published by Delcourt is written “Marcel Proust, À la recherche du tempsperdu, adaptation and illustrations by Stéphane Heuet”. With such an unassuming announcement of his role,the adaptor-illustrator manages to ascribe the literary paternity of a comic strip to Proust himself, which is no mean feat. And as a final irony or provocation, the “Recherche du temps perdu” illustrated by Heuet becomes “Tintin in the Land of the Guermantes”. As they peruse the rectangularframes of a classic comic strip with their “clear line” graphic style, those who enjoy a leisurely ramblethrough Proust’s meandering paragraphs may well find themselves aboard a high-speed train at full throttle:“Un amour de Swann” in two albums and 517 drawings, instead of 200 pages from the publisher Pléiade. Thisunnatural alliance has been denounced by advocates of literature as a travesty of Proust’s work, and bydevotees of authored comic strips as a work devoid of graphic boldness. This article sets out to answer both ofthese objections. (shrink)